


A Map of the Ends of the Earth

by Naladot



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Developing Friendships, F/M, Family Drama, Family Issues, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Politics, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-04-30 16:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14500887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: The Hundred Years’ War was her grandparents’ war: Katara’s just trying to make something out of the ashes. What she never expected was Prince Zuko showing up on her little island to do a “research project.” And she certainly never guessed that she’d be the one helping him.An “If the A:TLA ‘verse was inspired by contemporary Asia instead of historical Asia” AU





	1. Part 1: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love A:TLA and Zutara, and all these years later, it's still worth writing fic for them. This fic started with the idea of what the world of A:TLA would look like if it were inspired by contemporary Asia. With this in mind, Katara and the rest of the characters are not the children of war, but the grandchildren, and they live in the world reshaped by a war they have no personal memories of. Additionally, in this story the characters are all about 12 years older than in the original show. I hope you enjoy reading!

 

 

 

I.

 

 

The first time Katara saw him was in the island’s only CB Mart. She might not have noticed him if it weren’t for the towering security guard hovering around the automatic glass doors, glowering at the passerby. But the security guard was there, and this signaled that something unusual was happening on Whale Tail Island.

 

Then she saw him—Prince Zuko—in front of the food counter, pondering the selection of steamed buns. He looked confused. He probably had never eaten CB Mart steamed buns in his life, much less gone to get them himself on a sweltering island in the middle of an exhausting summer heat wave.

 

She could have helped him, but she didn’t. Instead she pushed past him to the ice cream freezer in the back.

 

By the time she turned around, he was already gone.

  
  
  


 

Generally speaking, Katara did not keep up with the news while at home. She scanned the headlines for any outbreaks of war or disease or famine, and she kept tabs on some bending bloggers, because she couldn’t curb her WWB addiction, even in the middle of nowhere. (In college, she’d joined an eighth-division World-Wide Bending team for a total of three months and had the time of her life, before she was forced to leave her team due to her “undetermined nationality.”) 

 

But she certainly did not comb the gossip columns for news of Prince Zuko’s personal life. If she read about him at all, it was in the context of the news. Whale Tail Island was Fire Nation territory, so only the monarchy’s political activities interested her. 

 

It was, however, the gossip columns she turned to for a sign of what might have brought him to her backwater island with only one security guard. The first headline held clues enough:  **Prince Zuko’s Parliament Gaffe Pushes Prime Minister to Breaking Point!**

 

Prince Zuko had, apparently, shouted at the Prime Minister in the middle of parliament. The article quoted him as yelling,  _ Sending troops into the armpit of the Earth Kingdom is a disgrace to our history! _ He wasn’t wrong, but—even Katara, a countryside peasant from an outlying territory, knew better than to yell at the Prime Minister, especially in the middle of Parliament.

 

So Prince Zuko was  _ here _ , riding out the bad press and ruffled feathers. Odd location choice for an exile.

 

Questions answered, she closed her computer, and did not think of Zuko again for a long time.

  
  
  


 

Katara had returned to Whale Tail Island four months earlier, after being gone for nearly eight years. She’d feared that her home would be changed beyond recognition, but it was exactly how she remembered it: dusty roads, ramshackle cabins, lush trees covering the mountains, the ocean lapping at the sand. The only difference was that she and Sokka had left together, but she had returned alone.

 

When she entered the dark thatched-roof house where she’d grown up, her Gran-Gran had only said, “Was it worth all the money you spent?”

 

“I think so,” Katara had told her.

 

Her Gran-Gran, reclined in her wicker rocking chair, had only scowled out the open window. “A lot of money on a Fire Nation school,” she’d said, in the old tongue.

 

Katara, pretending she didn’t understand, had left the room.

  
  
  


 

Now she worked for the smaller of the island’s two elementary schools. The larger was attended mostly by Fire Nation kids and some of the original Whale Tail Islanders, the smaller by Water Tribe kids. For the first time in sixty years since the school was founded, they’d been given permission to teach kids the old tongue, and waterbending. Katara, the only person on the island who was young enough to do the job, could speak the old tongue with some competence, and could waterbend, was hired almost at the moment her airship landed.

 

“I’m not giving you this job because you’re the chieftain’s daughter,” Principal Bato had said, “Or because your father is my friend. I’m giving it to you solely because you are the only person with the required skills.”

 

Bato had a dry sense of humor. A week in, Katara had realized that he wasn’t joking.

 

The kids were sweet, if unruly. Many of them had a keen interest in waterbending, some of them even had talent. None of them spoke the old tongue beyond a few words; some didn’t even have a name in the old tongue. None of them had ever seen the old country, and they crowded around Katara’s desk after school, touching her photographs of its snow-covered landscape.

 

It was, at least, an important job. Katara did not regret returning home. Not for this. 

  
  
  


 

The second time she saw Prince Zuko, he spoke to her.

 

Once again, his bodyguard stood at the entrance, this time the entrance to the public track. Sure enough, Zuko was there running laps. He ran fast, almost effortlessly, darting around the track like he had something to prove. Katara watched him for a moment. She could see the gossip industry’s obsession with him. He was tall, well-built, regal. If it weren’t for the scar, he would have been handsome. As it was, he was striking.

 

When she realized that she’d been staring nearly as long as the teenage girls to her right, Katara rolled her eyes, and began her own run. She preferred to swim when she could, but she was out of practice and the ocean forgave little. So she ran, as she had in the Fire Nation, as she had in Omashu. If the prince noticed her, he gave no indication. For her part, Katara stared straight ahead.

 

She thought he was gone when she finished her run. She stood for a minute to catch her breath, watching the drawl of the clouds across the blue sky and the sway of tree tops beyond the track. The track was fenced by a high concrete wall, painted twenty or so years ago. If Katara cared to look, she could find her own little blue handprint, pressed next to Sokka’s on the farthest wall. The track hadn’t been updated much since then. Weeds grew in the grassy center field, and the bleacher seats were rusted over from the salty ocean air. But it was home. She took a deep breath, relishing the moment.

 

And then a voice to her left. “Hi. Sorry to bother—I’m sorry, you’re busy—”

 

She turned, uncomprehending, to look up into the face of Prince Zuko. He rubbed the back of his neck, more awkward in person than the gossip articles had led her to expect.

 

“What?” she asked.

 

“Do you have the time?”

 

She couldn’t fathom why a runaway price would need the time on Whale Tail Island, where time was measured by frog-rooster crows and schedules were dictated by the rain.

 

“Uh,” Katara said, strikingly eloquent. She squinted up at the sun. “Nearly noon, I’d guess.”

 

Now it was his turn to look uncomprehending. The blankness soon solidified into what Katara would call general unease. The prince did not appear to be a happy, carefree individual.

 

“Thank you,” he said. He gave an overly formal bow, and then rejoined his bodyguard.

 

Katara walked home slowly, her running shoes thrown over her shoulder. She had to ask someone about this prince, and she didn’t want to. She wasn’t interested in bringing any more of the Fire Nation here.

  
  


 

Her school senior, Lakta, owned a small restaurant on the far side of the island. She earned her reputation as the keeper of the Water Tribe’s culinary tradition by reinventing her grandmother’s recipes with Whale Tail Island’s inferior sea prunes and sweet river fish. She was also the keeper of Whale Tail Island’s secrets.

 

“But what is he  _ doing _ here?” Katara insisted, leaning against a new, shiny metal counter. “He can’t just be hiding here, of all places.”

 

“Maybe he just wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle,” Latka said with a wink as she stirred a large batch of mussels.

 

“His type doesn’t come here to get away! They go to Ember Island,  _ maybe _ Huopo.” Katara gestured wildly. “What does he want with us?”

 

She wanted Latka to understand her indignation, but it was hard to explain. Katara had been very lucky in her travels. A scholarship covered the majority of her expenses in the Fire Nation’s best university. Since her family was poor, she’d still had to work hard to cover the rest, but she’d found good jobs with decent employers. If it weren’t for the incident, she could still be working in the capital, sending tons of money back home. But for all that she’d received, Katara had never been at home in the Fire Nation. Nothing could erase what had happened to her people—the ache of being torn from the old country. Nothing could change the fact that Katara was, at her core, Water Tribe. Even if sometimes, she felt more Fire Nation than she cared to admit. And Latka, who had never left the island, couldn’t feel the same boiling rage Katara did at the idea of the crown prince showing up at the only home they had left.

 

Latka sighed and stopped stirring her pot. “Okay, Katara. I heard a rumor—mind you, a  _ rumor _ —that he’s here doing a research project.”

 

Katara snorted. “Prince Zuko, the scholar?”

 

Latka shrugged. “That’s just what I heard.” She pointed at Katara with her spoon, still dripping. “Don’t antagonize him, Katara. We don’t need news crews swarming around here.”

 

Katara tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

Latka's eyebrow arched, but she didn't say anything. Katara chewed absently on some seaweed chips and looked around the kitchen. Latka had done well for herself, preserved their traditions, and started raising a family. Katara had the slightest twinge of envy—if only she could simplify her own life in this way, distill her time down to only the essentials. Heritage, responsibility, family. But her heart thumped wildly along in its own direction, sending her all over the world anyway.

 

"You just came back, Katara. You really haven't been on the island that long." Latka smiled gently, her blue eyes holding the depths of the ocean. "You're not in the Fire Nation anymore. You don't have to let all that fire consume you."

 

Katara wanted to argue—anger was the only reasonable response to the nation that had forced their tribe out of their homeland and stripped them of language and traditions. But on the other hand, she was tired. And Zuko was only an interruption.  Eventually he would leave, and it would be like he was never here at all.

 

 

 

"It's just like—he's almost not here, you know?" Katara sighed, watching her brother's face on the screen. "He keeps talking about Mom, but about their arguments. Sometimes he argues with me like he expects me to take up her side and argue back."

 

Sokka's brow furrowed, but he didn't say anything for a moment. She let her eyes drift to the room behind him. His office building in the Northern Nations, made of the finest imported Earth Kingdom steel, had a dark and imposing look. But the window behind him revealed snowy expanses, and as much as Katara hated the country their sister tribe had become, for a moment she envied him. Perhaps if she'd been able to set aside her differences—but she hadn't. 

 

"I don't know that you can really do anything, though." Sokka shrugged. "Except be there for Dad. Which you are. That's a good thing."

 

Katara wanted to say,  _ I wish you were here too _ , but she didn't. He already felt guilty, and their uneasy truce could crumble with a badly timed argument.

 

"Bato is the same, at least." Katara offers a smile. "He keeps coming into class and telling the kids all kinds of crazy stories. And you know how he is, totally deadpan."

 

"What stories?"

 

"The best one so far is that I killed a rainbow squid underwater with an icicle."

 

"But—didn't you do that?"

 

"It was a platy-shark. Totally different. I'd never win against a rainbow squid."

 

"Sure, Katara. Keep saying that." He grinned and for a moment, it was like her brother was back with her. As Sokka as ever.

 

"Hey, I gotta go," he said. "Big deadline coming up, design presentations in Ba Sing Se next week. Yue's not too happy about me traveling so far."

 

Katara nodded. "Be safe, Sokka."

 

"And you."

 

He signed off and Katara was left looking at the black face of her screen.

 

She never mentioned Prince Zuko. There was no reason to.

 

 

 

But Prince Zuko was still there, on Whale Tail Island. And the next day, he was in her office.

 

“Hi,” he said. “Uh—again.”

 

So he remembered her. That was fairly impressive; she didn’t think princes often had reason to remember strangers. He stood with his feet spread and hands clasped behind his back—a soldier’s pose. She remembered vaguely that he was in the navy, at some point. His eyes betrayed his discomfort.

 

“Can I help you?” Katara asked. She pointed in the direction of the door. “Principal Bato’s office is three doors down.”

 

“I just went to see him, actually. He suggested I speak with you.”

 

Katara’s eyebrows lifted before she could stop herself. She turned to her desk and set her stack of the children’s workbooks among all her other papers. Kids were already clumped at the door, looking inside with wide eyes and curious grins.

 

She turned back to Zuko. He still wasn’t smiling. A bead of sweat was making its way down his temple. For the first time it occurred to her that his hair was long and unkempt, curling in the humidity, rather than the cropped style favored by young men in the capital. Zuko was a strange fish.

 

“Well, what do you need?” She spoke too briskly, which was almost certainly impolite and improper. Then again, a first grader was now climbing the leg of Zuko’s security guard like he was a very mobile tree, so maybe her own impropriety would be excused.

 

“I need a translator.” Zuko wiped at the sweat trailing down his cheek with the back of his palm, and she looked at the gnarled red skin of his scar. The papers said it was a training accident. Katara knew some of the best firebenders in the world—and some of the worst. She doubted a training accident could produce  _ that _ . But all the other theories seemed outlandish, so she could only assume that whatever the truth was, it wasn’t circulating the gossip mills.

 

“Everyone here speaks your language,” she told him. “And my Omashu is very bad.”

 

Omashu was the nearest Earth Kingdom metropolis to Whale Tail Island, and the only other place she could think he might be going where he would need a translator. Omashu was not part of the United Earth Kingdom. As the Fire Nation and the United Earth Kingdom were technically still at war, he could only be traveling to Omashu or one of the other independent Earth Kingdom states.

 

But he shook his head. “No, I need a translator here. I want to interview the Water Tribe elders.”

 

Katara did not gape at him, but only because she clenched her jaw tightly and glared him down. 

 

“Why on earth would you want to do  _ that? _ ” She was definitely being rude, now, but she didn’t care. What did he want with them?

 

He held her gaze for a long moment, as if he hadn’t anticipated her reaction. “Well,” he began, “You may have seen some articles about me.”

 

“I saw one.”

 

“What the articles didn’t report was  _ why _ the prime minister wants to send troops into Nandong.” Here he paused, visibly frustrated, and closed his eyes. He opened them again, giving the Katara the distinct impression that he’d restrained himself from a dramatic eye roll. Hardly princely behavior. “We have some intelligence that the Avatar has been hiding there.”

 

Now Katara did gape. “The Avatar?” she questioned, utterly confused.

 

_ The Avatar? _ she repeated in her head. Impossible.

 

Zuko’s arms flew into the air. “Yes! They’re insane! Sending troops to Nandong is a waste of resources, a logistical nightmare, and most importantly, an unnecessary loss of lives! Ba Sing Se already passed a motion claiming Nandong as their territory, and we haven’t had a single skirmish with the U.E.K. in the last fifty years where the death toll wasn’t unconscionable—and the idiots running our country want to do this because of a  _ rumor _ that the  _ Avatar _ might be there—”

 

Prince Zuko was clearly worked up, but Katara was still stuck on his first statement. “No one in the Fire Nation believes in the Avatar,” she said, staring at Zuko.

 

His mouth pressed into a hard line. “Maybe no one you know,” he said. “But in the upper classes? Religious fanatics. All of them.”

 

Katara tried to process this. She had lived in the Fire Nation for nearly four years. Her entire education, preschool through university, was a Fire Nation education. She knew them, and in many ways was one of them. But the Avatar? She knew what they had to say about  _ that _ : it was a myth, a foolish fantasy, a backwards belief of the worst parts of the Earth Kingdom. The spirits influenced the world in many ways, but but the idea that they would manifest a representative human was merely a plot by historical kings to secure control of the continents.

 

Still, it wasn’t so long ago that she, too, had been obsessed with the history of the Avatar and all that it represented. She’d swallowed the Avatar philosophy wholesale, preached balance and justice, and sought out others who firmly believed the Avatar would return to set things right. And then—well, she’d left it all behind. And she didn’t want to think of it, not now. Not here, at home.

 

But here was Prince Zuko. She’d never been so close to a political leader before. He would be twenty-eight in a few months, if she remembered correctly, at which point he’d be granted one parliamentary vote, alongside his uncle and his father. She teetered on her decision—if she could influence the prince, shouldn’t she?

 

“So what is it you want to interview our elders for?” she asked.

 

Zuko turned his attention back to her, and the intensity of his gaze made her feel unsteady. “I want to prove that the Avatar died in the Southern Territories, eighty-five years ago. We all know it to be true. But I want to prove it to  _ them _ .”

 

Katara folded her arms across her chest. He’d found the line, and crossed it. Her opportunity for political influence be damned—she couldn’t do this.

 

“No,” she said.

 

Zuko, a prince, stared at her blankly. “No?”

 

“Under no circumstances,” Katara said, “Am I going to be accessory to you traumatizing our elders just to fix your own government squabbles—”

 

“My  _ what?” _

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

Zuko stared at her. The ceiling fan beat rhythmically through the hot air. The children were silent behind him, staring at Katara with wide eyes.

 

“But why not?” Zuko asked. Anger tinted his words, but he maintained control.

 

Katara, on the other hand, was not so skilled. “What do you not understand?” She gestured wildly to the map on the wall, trimmed with photographs of the old country. “Your grandfather ripped my people from our homeland, destroyed our traditions, outlawed our language, restricted our bending, and called it  _ benevolence _ !” She threw her arms into the air. “And now  _ you _ come to the only home we have, and ask me to help you make our elders relive the last battle where they had any chance of hope? You have got to be  _ insane _ !”

 

Chest heaving, Katara lowered her arms. Zuko stared at her in shock, his arms slack at his sides. He blinked and looked around, as if at a loss for what to do.

 

“You’ve made your point,” he said finally. He gave a formal bow in the Fire Nation style, one hand fisted and the other topping it in the image of a flame. “I’m sorry for asking. Good afternoon, Katara.”

 

And then he walked out of her office, parting the sea of children with a gentle hand on their heads. They all stared at Katara, their blue eyes full of questions she could not answer.

 

Then she looked around. In her anger, she’d turned all the summer humidity in the air into a thin sheet of ice on the walls.

  
  
  


 

Their summer festival began the next day. In the old country, the summer festival marked the end of warm weather and a turn toward cold days with no sunlight. After the Fire Nation forced them north, the festival continued with new traditions. No longer did they need to hunt the deep ocean’s mightiest sea monsters to provide food for the long winter months. But nevertheless, the festival still began with a hunt and ended with a party.

 

Katara spent the morning distracted. She coached the children on their embroidery and helped the older grades line a cellar properly with ice, for storing fish meat. The other teachers snuck glances at her throughout the day, but only Bato was bold enough to ask her outright what she had done to Prince Zuko.

 

“The right thing,” Katara said briskly.

 

Bato’s eyebrow arched. “You are your mother’s daughter.” He said it with a slight tone of exasperation, but didn’t press the point.

 

In the evening, they moved to the beach. She spotted Zuko at the far end, standing next to Whale Tail Island’s governor. The governor was a fair woman, the daughter of a Water Tribe mother and Fire Nation father. Katara respected her leadership, as she had consistently supported the Water Tribe’s right to assemble and flouted some Fire Nation laws in their favor—including the hunting laws she was ignoring right now. But she was a hard woman, difficult to like. Katara hoped that she scared Zuko right off the beach.

 

The assembled Water Tribe all wore blue, though not the furs their grandparents had brought from the old country. But their blue tunics and dresses still warmed Katara’s heart, reminding her of her childhood years when she and Sokka had eagerly pulled out their best clothes from storage. At that time, their mother was still alive, and she’d carefully painted her face with black and white paint. A warrior, ready for the hunt. Katara was only twelve when she’d taken up her mother’s place on the hunting boats.

 

Now she took that place again, climbing into the largest ship on the beach. As the chieftain’s daughter, she was thus the highest ranking person in the tribe who could waterbend. It was her duty to begin the hunt.

 

She stood in the ship, and began to sing. Soon the other tribespeople echoed her, all in the old tongue, mourning the dying sun and praying for a successful hunt. A chill ran down her arms. This was a very old tradition, reaching some place deeper in her soul than she could comprehend. Her fingers lifted to touch her mother’s necklace. And then the song was done, and the hunt began.

 

They pulled the ships out into the sea, hundreds of waterbenders moving in unison. Except for the oldest among them, they’d all been trained in the firebending style, but during this hunt they mimicked the elderly’s push and pull. Within minutes the beach was a thin line on the horizon, and the sun was a sliver of gold in the distance.

 

“Forward!” Katara shouted, and the others echoed her. They fanned out in a long line and Katara reached her hand over the flat side of the boat, feeling the cold water. Salt eels were still plentiful in these waters, and puffin rays. They would make a good catch, this time. She could feel it humming in her bones.

 

A break in the waves signaled commotion occurring beneath the waters. Their ships moved forward, in rhythm with the ocean, and soon they were on top of the bubbling dark mass that indicated a puffin ray gliding below. They moved into a circular formation and began to move the water in unison. Slowly it swirled, then faster, until a whirlpool trapped the puffin ray in a spinning tunnel of water.

 

The waterbenders, some three hundred of them, lifted in unison. Sweat streamed down Katara’s face as she strained under the weight of the water below her. The moon appeared from behind the clouds, as if to encourage them, and as the stars winked into life, the waterbenders planted their heels and lifted their arms above their heads.

 

A great mountain of ice rose from the ocean. Atop it sat a giant puffin ray, as wide across as four boats and as thick as Katara was tall. A cheer erupted across all the boats. They returned to the shore, puffin ray in tow.

 

Preparing such a large creature took hours, but by the time they returned, the whole tribe had prepared countless other dishes, and they set in on the puffin ray with glee. Katara took her place by her father, Hakoda, on one of the low platforms built on the beach for the occasion. In the glow of firelight, she took in the frenzy around her, the music and laughter and the aroma of good food.

 

“Word has it you yelled at Prince Zuko,” her father said. Sitting here, with his ceremonial whale bones braided into his long hair and eyes rimmed with black paint, he looked every inch the warrior king. He looked like she remembered him, noble and fearsome, the way he’d always looked when her mother was alive. She missed this version of her father.

 

“I was within my rights,” Katara said. Gran-Gran snorted on Hakoda’s other side.

 

“You always say that,” Gran-Gran muttered. Katara did not take the bait.

 

“What did he want?” Hakoda continued.

 

She hesitated, playing with the whale-bone rings on her fingers. It was one thing to yell at the prince of the Fire Nation, but quite another to confess her anger to her father. Their tribe believed that emotions should move like water—intensity should be matched by time, as a tidal wave warned of its approach by drawing away from the shore. A burst of temper mirrored fire, and not water. It was yet another way Katara felt that she was not quite the Water Tribe woman she intended to be.

 

“He wanted to interview the elders about the Battle of Kashanuk,” she said, staring into the bonfire, rather than looking at her father. “He intends to prove that the Avatar died.”

 

Her father was quiet for a moment. He shifted closer to her, his presence a comfort. “And you disapproved of this?”

 

“It was his grandfather who destroyed us,” Katara explained. “What right does he have?”

 

She felt sure that this was true. But before either she or her father could say anything else, her Gran-Gran stood up.

 

“I’d talk to him,” she said, leaning against her cane.

 

For a moment, Katara couldn’t process what she had said. She just stared at her gran-gran, this unfathomable woman who rarely spoke unnecessary words and scolded more often than she praised.

 

“Why?” was all Katara could say.

 

“Because I want to,” Gran-Gran said simply. And then she hobbled away, in search of puffin ray meat.

 

Katara glanced at her father. He looked amused, in the frustrating way of a parent. 

 

"It may be,” he said slowly, “That some of  the elders would like to say a few things to Fire Lord Azulon’s grandson. You could at least ask.”

 

Katara’s emotions swirled within her. She wanted to protect the elders from further trauma. But if she admitted it, part of her was scared. She knew the stories about leaving the old country, and about the Battle of Kashanuk, from her parents. The elders seldom talked about the old days. They passed on traditions and knowledge and ancient history, but recent history—they didn’t often talk about that.

 

And what if the Avatar really was dead?

 

“I’m afraid to ask,” Katara admitted, finally meeting her father’s eyes. “I’m afraid I won’t like what they have to say.”

 

This was another thing—the elders had a frustrating way of living in the past, touting old maxims and even at times praising the Fire Nation. She couldn’t allow Prince Zuko to hear  _ that _ .

 

The more she thought about it, the more she realized her reasons for refusing Zuko were multi-layered. Too much history had piled up, too many experiences, and she didn’t even know what lay at the heart of her refusal. Maybe it was righteous indignation, maybe it was fear. Her life in the Earth Kingdom had taught her that too often, the good and the bad was mixed right up together in her own heart.

 

“That’s possible,” her father acknowledged. “I think you should try it, and see how it goes. The prince might learn something. And you might, too.”

 

Katara wanted to refuse her father’s advice. But somehow, she’d already listened to him, and was halfway to making what surely must be the worst decision of her life.

  
  
  


 

The prince was staying in the island’s best hotel, near the old Fire Nation fort on the far side of the island. Katara walked the dusty roads slowly, to give herself plenty of time to back out. She considered offering to just do one interview, but she knew that if she embarked on this project, she would be sucked in. 

 

By the time she had reached the CB Mart, she knew that she was going to do it. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t about Prince Zuko. She was going to help him because the only way she might ever get any honest answers about the past, was if an odd Fire Nation prince were the one asking.

 

The situation still wasn’t ideal. She still couldn’t escape the fact that the Fire Nation controlled them, when they might rather govern themselves. But as it were, showing the prince what they’d been through might not seem so bad. He seemed at least empathetic. She granted him that.

 

The security let her inside the hotel without any fuss. The architecture was old Fire Nation style, with sloping ceilings made of scented wood. She removed her sandals at the door and entered the one-story building. A receptionist doodled absently at her desk. The wood floors gleamed and sunlight filtered through each pane of glass. Katara located the prince’s rooms by the security guard stationed at the door.

 

“I’d like to discuss my employment,” she told the guard. He was the same one who’d been at the school and he nodded, then slid open the door panel to let her inside.

 

Zuko sat on the mat floor. He was frowning at some papers and the computer on his desk. He wore a pair of thick-framed glasses, shorts, and a red WWB Championship shirt. For the briefest moment, he was any young man hard at work. Katara stared, at a loss for words.

 

“Oh,” Zuko said, and bolted up. “I, uh—didn’t know anyone was here.” He squared his shoulders. “Here for a rematch?”

 

He seemed to be making a joke—an inappropriate one, but a joke nonetheless.

 

“I’ve considered your request,” Katara said. She kept her voice neutral and her words formal, unwilling to put herself on too-familiar terms with the prince.

 

He held up a hand. “Let me apologize, first.”

 

Once again, Katara didn’t know what to say. Zuko sighed, as if a heavy weight rested on his shoulders.

 

“I realized that I wasn’t being considerate in my request,” he said. “I regret any harm it may have caused.”

 

Katara wanted to say many things, but at the very least, she felt the apology was sincere. The prince, in his gilded bubble, must have had many unusual life experiences to bring himself to apologize to a poor girl from the territories.

 

“I discussed it with my family,” she said. “And I think I can act as your translator.”

 

Zuko's  eyes widened with shock. Then he lit up, excited to finally embark on his quest.

 

“But I have one condition,” Katara continued. “If I help you, and you return to Parliament—I want you to help me in return.”

 

Zuko nodded. “That seems fair.”

 

“I want formal recognition of Whale Tail Island as a province, and not a territory.”

 

Now Zuko fell silent, his eyes clouded as he considered the implications of what she asked. Katara knew very well what she was asking. She was asking for citizenship for her people, a formal recognition of their presence on the island. So long as Whale Tail Island remained a territory, the Fire Nation ignored what they had done to the Water Tribe. Katara was not so idealistic as to imagine a mass exodus of her people to return to the old country. Life there was hard, food was scarce, and the spirits of the old country were indifferent at best, malicious at worst. But if the Fire Nation acknowledged them, perhaps the Water Tribe could forge a new path in the new world.

 

“I might not be able to deliver what you’re asking,” Zuko said in a low voice. “My father—”

 

“You are your own man,” Katara cut in, restraining herself from growing too loud. “And if what  _ you _ want is to convince people the Avatar is really gone—then this is what I want. This is my payment.”

 

Zuko didn’t speak. She watched him weigh the decision in his mind, well aware that it might mean death to his already unsteady popularity. And, she suspected, a severe disagreement with his father.

 

“Do you think your elders really know something?” Zuko asked.

 

Katara could only tell the truth. “Yes. I do.”

 

Zuko nodded. “Then you have my word.”

 

They bowed. And then they sealed the agreement with a contract written in ink, one copy for each of them, which they burned in the tradition of Fire Nation oaths.

 

Katara glanced at the prince as he lit his oath aflame with a snap of his fingertips. She did not understand this man—the quiet anger burning inside him, or the gentle movements of his hands as he let the ashes float into the wind. She turned her gaze to the blue expanse of ocean beyond them. Whoever this man was underneath the royal exterior, they were now bound by a promise. And they had work to do.

 

 

_ tbc... _


	2. Part 1: Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I posted the first chapter of this story, I never imagined it would take me five months to post the second one. Life stuff and a sudden "oh crap, a multi-chapter fic?" writer's block kept me from writing this, but I'm back with a solid plot outline and a story to tell!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment. I am so grateful for your encouragement and I hope you like seeing this story (finally) develop further!

* * *

 

II.

 

 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Bato said, the slightest smile betraying his wry amusement. He looked at Katara with a glimmer in his eyes. They stood at the top of a small hill, looking down at the school entrance gate below them. There, Zuko sat inside a small, sun-faded taxi, waiting while his bodyguard surveyed the area. “He seems—volatile.”

 

Katara snorted. “I’m sure I can handle him.”

 

“Right. That’s what gives me a bad feeling.” Bato sighed and clapped Katara on the shoulder, his wry smile growing. “Try not to get us on the news, would you? I hate answering phone calls.”

 

Katara rolled her eyes and watched as the bodyguard signaled the area safe, and Zuko climbed out of the taxi. The driver, Sanu, watched the process with obvious delight. Katara tried not to dwell on the knowledge that she would be the main topic of the day’s gossip. Maybe the week’s.

 

Zuko scaled the hillside quickly, undeterred by the gravelly pockmarks in the old concrete. His bodyguard lagged behind, eyes peeled for any sign of attack. But nothing moved in that oppressive heat besides a gaggle of kids, twice the number that should have been at the school entrance. Supposedly they were there to help clean the school grounds, but most of their time was spent gawking at the prince. When she thought Zuko wasn’t looking, Katara pointed at them and flicked a finger in the direction of their brooms. The kids quickly got back to work—or at least, pretended to.

 

“Principal Bato,” Zuko said with a stiff, formal bow in his direction. “Teacher Katara.” He repeated the bow and Katara followed suit, automatically snapping into Fire Nation posture. She could feel the prince’s eyes on her as she straightened, but when she looked at him, he averted his gaze.

 

“In the Water Tribe,” Bato replied, his voice strangely regal, “Men greet each other like this.” He stepped forward and grasped Zuko’s forearm in his own strong hand. Zuko imitated him, his stance betraying his Fire Nation heritage, but the gesture nevertheless acceptable. “When you meet the elders,” Bato continued, “They will appreciate it if you use our greeting.”

 

A bold statement to make to the Fire Nation prince. But Zuko didn’t seem to notice how forward the principal was being, and his bodyguard’s expression didn’t change a bit.

 

“Should we leave now?” Zuko asked. His eyes darted to Katara’s, then quickly returned to Bato.

 

“We should prepare first,” Katara answered.

 

He turned his gaze back to Katara. His eyes gave her the strange but certain impression that he was nervous. Nothing else—not his posture, nor his words, nor the bodyguard, who was absently swatting away flies—would have suggested this, but his eyes were wide and unfocused where everything else was rigid and calm.

 

“I’m ready,” Zuko replied, far too solemnly for the occasion.

 

Katara gestured to the building to their right, and Zuko turned to lead the way. So, still a prince, if a nervous one. Katara chanced a look at Bato, who was also managing to keep his expression neutral. But his eyes sparkled with amusement. Katara drew a finger across her throat and he broke out into a wide smile, glanced at the prince’s back, and then winked at Katara.

 

One day, she was going to get him back for this teasing. One day.

 

“Turn right here,” Katara squawked at Zuko, losing her chance to fuss at her obnoxious honorary uncle. Zuko turned right, which placed them squarely in front of the small building. Behind them was the rest of the school, much larger and filled with children, who no doubt had their noses pressed against the windows.

 

Katara cleared her throat as she stepped in front of Zuko. “This is our cultural heritage museum,” she explained, gesturing behind her. “Many people who visit the island come to this museum. As you can see, the mural on this wall depicts a famous Water Tribe legend in our traditional painting style.”

 

She watched as Zuko nodded and scanned the mural. Up close, he was even taller than she had realized. Or maybe she herself was just short. Was she standing too close to him? What was the proper distance to put between oneself and the Fire Nation prince? She shoved away these questions and resolved to focus on the task at hand.

 

“Is this—a hunting story?” Zuko asked.

 

“Avatar Aknara.” Katara pointed to a small figure in the center of the swirling sea battle. “As the legend goes, the sea monster terrorized our village for nearly two hundred years before the winds of fate blew in our favor, and the Avatar was born into the Southern Tribe. She was the only one strong enough to stop this monster. You probably saw her image on the decorations at the festival last week.”

 

Zuko’s eyes widened with realization and he nodded. “I assumed it was a spirit.”

 

“Well, the Avatar is a spirit,” Katara corrected. Then frowned. “Or so they say.”

 

They held each other’s gaze for a brief moment. Katara didn’t know what Zuko thought of the Avatar, besides believing him to be dead, and Zuko had no way of knowing what Katara thought. Even Katara didn’t know her own thoughts, not anymore. Not after what happened in Omashu, with Jet and the others. But she refused to dwell on that.

 

Zuko’s eyes returned to the mural, snapping the moment apart. Katara opened the door to the museum. “In here,” she said.

 

She waited patiently while Zuko examined the various displays of traditional Southern Water Tribe houses, clothing, bowls, and boats. As he looked at the old black-and-white pictures hanging on the far wall, she watched him for any sign of his thoughts. The pictures were all recent, from the early years on Whale Tail Island, taken by Fire Nation reporters and aid workers with the newly-invented portable camera. In most of the pictures, the elders glared solemnly at the viewer, their expressions impenetrable. Only in one picture was anyone smiling—a picture of Katara’s mother as a very small baby, pointing at the camera with obvious delight while her parents looked on, laughing. As she often had before, Katara wished her maternal grandparents were still alive.

 

Zuko turned and looked at her, expectant. Katara snapped out of her reverie.

 

“We should look over the Battle of Kashanuk,” Katara said. “Before we go to interview the elders.”

 

Zuko frowned slightly. “I reviewed the history extensively, I assure you. Our historians were very thorough—”

 

Katara sighed and held up a hand. “My apologies, your highness, but I’ve read the Fire Nation history books. All of them. I’m sure you realize that historians _always_ have bias—or have you never seen an Earth Kingdom biography of Avatar Si-Pheng?”

 

Zuko blinked, the wheels in his brain visibly clicking away while he processed her comment. Katara’s comment was a strategic move formulated after all her years spent in the Fire Nation. While she sorely disagreed with the Fire Nation’s telling of the Hundred Years’ War, and their assumptions about her tribe made her furious, the one thing they could all agree on was that Avatar Si-Pheng was the worst Avatar to have lived.

 

“We don’t usually talk about Avatar Si-Pheng,” Zuko finally said with a frown.

 

“I know,” Katara replied. “I was educated in the Fire Nation.”

 

“You know, the Earth Kingdom scholars say he was an Avatar enlightened beyond his time.” Zuko gave her a wry smile. “I thought—you’d say the same?”

 

Katara rolled her eyes. “He knew our tribe in the North was in the middle of a bloody civil war,” Katara said. “He knew it was one of the worst wars the world had seen and he called us barbarians, unworthy of ‘civilized intervention.’ He said the world would be better off if we drowned ourselves.”

 

Zuko nodded, considering her words. Avatar Si-Pheng had also famously described his time learning to firebend as “the worst kind of childish play,” and Katara knew that the words of this Avatar had been twisting a hot iron in the hearts of the Fire Nation’s citizens for hundreds of years. It gave her a strange common ground with the Fire Nation, acknowledging that that particular Avatar was repulsive.

 

“So what you’re getting at is,” Zuko mused, “Our historians were inaccurate in their records of the Battle of Kashanuk.”

 

Katara knelt down and unlocked a dusty cabinet beneath the framed photographs. “Maybe inaccurate isn’t the right word,” she said, pulling out a cardboard box. “We could also say misinformed.”

 

“Ignorant,” Zuko said.

 

Katara paused in lifting the box. This prince was always full of surprises. She steadied herself, and forced herself to look up at Zuko again.

 

“About the Water Tribe? Yes.”

 

At that, Zuko merely nodded. Katara considered him for a moment—this was only one more odd moment. Had the prince been trained in how to talk to her? It wouldn’t surprise her if he was trained in spy-craft and emotional manipulation, with uncanny skills for earning the trust of underpaid translators. She shook herself, and opened the box.

 

“At the time of the Battle of Kashanuk, there was a reporter from Omashu who was living in our tribe.”

 

Zuko winced, then nodded. “I’ve reviewed his work.”

 

Katara began pulling the old photographs out of the box. The reporter had written extensively about the Fire Nation’s brutality, including their propensity to force captured Water Tribe warriors into their island mines, where firebenders too often caused unintended explosions and could not labor safely. No wonder Zuko winced.

 

“Tell me what you know about the battle,” Katara said. She splayed the photographs across the counter and turned to him.

 

His brow creased. “The Southern Raiders mounted a large-scale attack on the Kashanuk Peninsula during the third year of Fire Lord Azulon’s reign. Southern Water Tribe warriors held the Kashanuk fort for two weeks, putting both sides at a stalemate. Avatar Aang's arrival precipitated a turning point of the battle, and it appeared that the Fire Nation troops would be forced back to sea, until Admiral Cai launched a newly developed bomb which killed Avatar Aang and, according to religious scholars, ended the Avatar cycle from that point forward.”

 

“And _then_ the Fire Nation enslaved the Southern Water Tribe and forced them to relocate to Whale Tail Island, where they labored in mineral mines for forty years before protests in the Fire Nation forced the Fire Lord to be slightly less evil.”

 

The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to reconsider. Zuko’s eyes widened, and a thick silence spread between them. Katara felt regret pressing uncomfortably against her chest, but she would not apologize. Beads of sweat slid down the prince’s temple, either from the heat or discomfort or both. They looked at each other, neither one speaking. Finally, Katara decided the best thing to do was to keep talking. She sighed, and gestured to the black-and-white photographs.

 

“Tell me what you see.”

 

Though he still looked uncomfortable, Zuko stepped forward and picked up a photograph. He examined each one in turn, his eyes roving the blurred shapes and indistinct shadows. The ice did not photograph easily, not back then.

 

After the last photograph, Zuko looked at her. “It doesn’t look like I imagined.” He let the photograph float back to its place, and shook his head. “It’s more brutal. I’ve been in battles, and I’ve seen terrible things. But not like this.”

 

That wasn’t what Katara expected, or what she intended. The photographs had an abstract quality for her, the dark blots of bodies in the snow somehow unreal. Zuko’s pale face and thin grimace made her uneasy, like she’d made a misstep.

 

“Well—yes. But look at this one.” She picked up a photograph from the middle of the group and held it for Zuko to see. The center of the photograph was white, darkened at the edges by odd shadows in the snow and the profile of a teenage boy’s face.

 

“It looks like they photographed the sun,” Zuko said.

 

“Look closer.” Katara pointed a finger to the center of the white. She traced the faintest gray outlines, waiting for realization to dawn on Zuko the way it had on her ten years ago.

 

“Is that—a man?”

 

Katara couldn’t help but smile as she looked up at Zuko. “Sure looks like it,” she said.

 

Zuko grabbed the photograph from her and held it close to his face, then far away. Then he pulled his glasses out of his bag and pushed them on, examining the photograph again.

 

“You ever read about the Avatar State, your highness?”

 

Zuko took off his glasses and tapped them against the photo. “This is photographic evidence of the Avatar State?”

 

Katara lifted her eyebrows and grinned. “And that’s just one thing your historians missed.”

  
  


 

They sat on the benches in front of the school museum to draft their interview questions. Predictably, Zuko proved to be an adept interviewer, if a little boring. He struck Katara as an incredibly by-the-book sort of person, rattling off interview questions like firebending drills. Katara recorded her notes, mentally translating each question in her head. A few questions would translate too awkwardly to get at what Zuko intended—she didn’t know how to say “military protocol” in the old tongue, for example, and she doubted anyone remembered or cared how many Earth Kingdom-imported ballasts had been used in the construction of the fort—but it would be close enough.

 

After nearly an hour, the school bells rang and they were finally finished with their preparations. Katara looked up from her notes and spotted the bodyguard sitting on a swing, his body too large and bulky to fit. Children ran out into the courtyard, immediately surrounding him and begging to sit in his lap.

 

“He has kids,” Zuko said.

 

Katara looked over at him. “What?”

 

He gestured to the bodyguard. “Bo. He has kids, back home. So you don’t need to be worried.”

 

Katara blinked. Then nodded. The kids were _definitely_ ignoring the rules of propriety. It was good to know that the bodyguard wasn’t prone to a fiery outburst. She should probably reprimand the kids, though, but they looked far too delighted with their new playmate.

 

“Do you have kids?”

 

It took Katara a moment to realize that Zuko was addressing her, again. She pointed to herself, and he nodded, his face open with genuine interest. Suddenly Katara remembered that she was twenty-six—a reasonable age to have kids, especially for rural folk.

 

“No,” she said, too strongly. She shrugged. “I’m not married.”

 

Zuko nodded. “Me neither.”

 

Katara couldn’t help but snort. “I know.”

 

Another tight smile. “Do you follow the tabloids?”

 

“Of course not. But you’re in much more than just the tabloids. You getting married will be an international political event.”

 

Zuko sighed. “Thanks for reminding me.”

 

“No problem, Prince Zuko.” Katara bit back a grin.

 

A small boy clambered up onto the bodyguard’s shoulders and began to holler as if he was riding a bull-pig. Katara spotted a small smile on the man’s lips as he stood up, lifting the boy with him, and the boy’s eyes went wide. He gripped the man’s head in terror, then began to laugh.

 

“You said you were educated in the Fire Nation.”

 

Katara turned to Zuko again. His determination to make small talk rivaled his stubborn refusal to apologize to Parliament. Katara was beginning to get the impression that Zuko did not give up on anything easily.

 

“Yes. National Caldera University.”

 

His lips turned down at the corners and he considered her. “Did you ever attend any government functions? You look really familiar.”

 

Katara froze in her spot. The prince kept watching her, searching her face for some sort of clue. Katara had not expected _this_ , and she forced herself to clear her throat and move her dry tongue into some sort of words.

 

“I majored in medicine,” she managed. “So you probably have me confused with someone else.”

 

Zuko clearly didn’t believe her. He kept staring, trying to place her face, before he shook himself and gestured to the bodyguard.

 

“I’ll collect Bo,” he said. “And we can be on our way.”

 

He stood, and Katara jumped up beside him. He didn’t seem to notice, though, and strode off towards his bodyguard-turned-jungle-gym.

 

Katara absently wrung her hands. She really, really hadn’t expected that. But now she’d made an oath to help a prince who would, at some point, realize where he’d seen her: on television. And if he realized that Katara was “an enemy of the peace,” then what good was the bargain she’d made with him?

 

But there was nothing to be done. Her stint on television had lasted for a week nearly five years ago, a drop in the bucket of the sensational drama of Fire Nation news channels. Surely, he wouldn’t figure it out.

 

A moment later, Zuko and his bodyguard returned. “Should we call the taxi?” Zuko asked.

 

Katara pushed her worries out of her mind and grinned in spite of herself. “Actually,” she said, “I had another idea.”

  


 

 

Soon they stood in the school parking lot, looking at a couple of old motorbikes.

 

“This is how we get around on the island,” Katara said, patting the dingy motorbike affectionately. “You ever ridden one of these, your highness?”

 

Zuko glanced at his bodyguard—Bo, Katara remembered— then back at Katara. “I’ve operated plenty of military machinery. This doesn’t look that hard.”

 

Katara stepped away from the bike and gestured to it with a royal flourish, catching Bo’s eyes as she did so. She swore she spotted amusement flickering there.

 

Zuko sat himself on the motorbike, sitting entirely too erect and proper-like. Katara chanced a glance over at Bo. He was definitely smiling now. Zuko twisted the handlebar accelerator, and the motorbike shot forward. Immediately, Zuko grabbed the brakes, launching himself forward off the seat. He caught himself with a sharp jump to his feet, his firebending training evident in his movement, and whipped around to glare at them.

 

“Ha, ha,” he said.

 

“Sorry, your highness,” Bo answered. “Actually, I can’t let you drive. Insurance liability.”

 

Zuko glared at the air above him, with the aura of someone regularly pranked by his bodyguard. Then he got off the bike and gestured to it with another mock-royal flourish. “All yours,” he said to Katara.

 

She turned to grin at Bo. “What do you say, Bo? Do you want to drive Prince Zuko, or shall I?”

 

Bo blinked, then shrugged. “It’s bad luck to have two men on a motorbike.”

 

This was almost certainly not a thing anyone believed. It was also the moment Katara realized that Bo had been recruited for Team Bato. She should _never_ have left the two of them alone while she took Zuko into the museum.

 

But she couldn’t let Zuko see her blush. “Come on, highness,” she said, swinging her leg over the motorbike and revving the engine.

 

He didn’t protest, but immediately climbed on behind her. Bo took the other one and started the engine, while Katara handed Zuko a helmet. “Because you’re a prince,” she explained, tapping her own unbuckled helmet. “They’re really just for decoration. If you go flying off, it’s not going to save you.”

 

“Guess I shouldn’t go flying off, then.”

 

“Good plan.”

 

Katara started driving, looking in her mirrors for Bo behind her. She caught sight of Zuko’s face in the mirror, too, his somber frown back in place. She considered that as she drove down the hill and out onto the street.

 

The drive to the elder’s house twisted along the mountainous coast. As she swung around each turn, Katara became aware of Zuko’s bodily presence in a way she absolutely did not want to be thinking about. He wasn’t touching her, but on every turn his thighs would knock against hers. And in addition to his oblivious frown, she could see his wide shoulders in the mirror as well. Damn this prince and his big-spoon figure. Katara pushed herself forward in the seat and accelerated unnecessarily.

 

“Who are we going to see?” Zuko called out over the noise of the wind.

 

“The elder from the photo I showed you,” Katara called back. “The teenager. He doesn’t remember much anymore, but he’s the only person alive who wasn’t a baby when the battle happened.”

 

Zuko nodded solemnly. They rounded another turn, and his leg knocked against hers again. She could rest her elbows on his stupid muscular thighs, if she wanted to. Dammit, it was like Bato had _engineered_ this. Nothing delighted the tribe quite as much as embarrassing Katara.

 

So what if Zuko was physically attractive? Literally the entire world thought so. In parts of the U.E.K., women traded illicit paperbacks about dangerous firebending princes modeled entirely off of the real one. She was pretty sure men had their own Zuko-inspired media to look at, but she had never pursued that bit of information. And here she was, seated between the world-famous prince’s legs. But it was hardly like the fantasies, because as it turned out, Zuko was a complete stick-in-the-mud.

 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sokka’s voice teased _that makes him the perfect companion for a wet blanket!_ Katara rolled her eyes at her own head-Sokka, told head-Sokka that she was _not_ a wet blanket, and reminded him that real-Sokka would never approve of a firebender, and definitely not the Fire Nation’s crown prince.

 

She was so absorbed in arguing with head-Sokka that she almost drove past the elder’s house. Spotting it, she grabbed the brakes. They jerked to a stop, propelling Zuko forward, so that he was completely spooning her. He caught his balance by grabbing her arms.

 

“Sorry,” he said immediately. He jumped off the bike a little too quickly to seem unflustered, and his face was a brilliant shade of pink. Katara cut the engine, and hoped Bo hadn’t spotted the mishap.

 

“It was my mistake,” she told him, avoiding his eyes. “We’re here.”

 

They turned to look at the house as Bo parked beside them. The cottage stood on a cliffside, overlooking the glittering ocean below. The elder lived with his daughter, now elderly herself, and three screeching sparrowkeets. Zuko raised his hand to shade his eyes.

 

“Is that him?” he asked.

 

Katara spotted a small and shriveled man sitting in a chair on the porch. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  


 

 

The elder, Basata, did not see them approach. His daughter met them on the steps up to the house, her white unbraided hair nearly obscuring her wide eyes.

 

“He’s doing well today,” she told them. “I told him he would have visitors, and he asked for his beads. I think he’ll enjoy your visit.” She glanced nervously at Zuko as she spoke.

 

Katara opened her mouth, but Zuko spoke first.

 

“Thank you for your gracious hospitality,” he said, bowing deeply.

 

Though Katara doubted that Zuko could read the woman’s face, Katara saw her expression change. She looked both embarrassed and pleased. As Zuko straightened, Katara also saw a change of expression on his face—he seemed bashful, somehow. This whole situation was starting to get beyond Katara’s ability to comprehend.

 

“Thank you, Lota,” Katara said. She jerked her head at Zuko, and he followed her up the steps.

 

On the porch, Basata sat gazing out to the sea, his warrior’s hair beads grasped in his gnarled hands. He did not notice their approach until Katara sat next to him and touched his arm.

 

“Oh,” he said. “You’re here.” His eyes drifted up to Zuko, whom he surveyed without any recognition. Zuko sat himself in the other chair and nodded to Katara.

 

“Grandfather Basata,” she said in the old tongue, suddenly nervous. “We want to ask you some questions about Kashanuk.” She pulled her notes from her bag and, when she looked up again, discovered Basata was watching her.

 

“What about it?” he demanded.

 

“What do you remember?” Zuko interjected, in his own language.

 

Basata’s eyes turned slowly to look at Zuko again. “I already told you,” he said in Fire Nation, his eyes a thousand miles away. “Avatar died. Bad day. Don’t remember more.”

 

Katara caught Zuko’s eye and shook her head sharply. The disappearance of the Avatar had been a favored topic of the early Whale Tail Island magistrate, according to the records Katara had found in the county hall, back when she was obsessed with the Avatar. Eventually, she would have to share these records with Zuko, as well. Though it wouldn’t matter if he remembered he’d seen her on television, so it wasn’t worth mentioning.

 

She returned to the old tongue. “Can you tell us about that day?”

 

Basata turned the beads over in his hands and sucked at his lips. “Not much to tell,” he said with a sigh, looking out at sea again. “The waterbenders were changing the tides, I remember that. We were waiting for them to change the tides when the Avatar arrived.”

 

Katara’s brow furrowed. “Changing the tides?”

 

Basata shook his head. “You wouldn’t know, Kanna. The waterbenders did it.”

 

Katara ignored the fact that he’d confused her for her grandmother, and puzzled over this bit of information. _Changing the tides?_ She’d never heard of such a thing, not even when she was training in the Northern Water Tribe.

 

She could feel Zuko watching her, waiting for a translation. But she shook her head, and turned to Basata again.

 

“Then what happened?”

 

He shrugged his shoulders. “The Avatar went to fight the firebenders. They attacked him. Saw a bright light, like the world was ending. I never quarreled with spirits, did my duty of course—but I never asked the spirits to look at me. Thought I was about to die.”

 

This lined up with other descriptions of the Avatar State that Katara had read. “And then?” she prompted.

 

“Avatar was gone. The tides hadn’t been changed. The firebenders came ashore.” He looked at her with oceans in his eyes. “It happened like that.”

  


 

 

Katara and Zuko sat on a rough wooden bench at the edge of the property for Katara to translate while Zuko took notes. When they finished, Zuko tapped his pencil at the top of the page.

 

“Changing the tides?” Zuko mused, glancing up at Katara over his glasses. “You’re talking about waterbending on a scale nobody’s ever seen.”

 

Katara shrugged, trying to hide her excitement. “But what if it’s true?”

 

“Without modern technology?”

 

“It’s possible,” Katara said. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. “We lost all our waterbending forms during the war, because they were all taught orally, and the elders decided not to pass them on. It’s possible.”

 

Zuko’s brow furrowed, but he nodded. “It’s possible. I’ve seen some crazier things in this world.”

 

Now Katara _had_ to continue these interviews. If she could recover knowledge of Southern waterbending style—her whole perception of the world would be different.

 

“His description of the Avatar State is unusual.”

 

“I didn’t think so,” Katara said, still envisioning herself learning to change tides. She shook herself and forced herself to focus on Zuko. “Most records show that witnesses of the Avatar State, throughout history, called it one of the most frightening things they’d ever seen in their lives. Which is partly why people say it must be legend, not real.”

 

“But I want evidence that the Avatar _died,_ ” Zuko said. “All the records of Avatar deaths are the same. The Avatar died _bodily_ , and was prepared for burial. Even on the battlefield. Your elder didn’t say that.”

 

Katara shrugged. “No Avatar’s ever been killed in the Avatar State.”

 

“I guess not.”

 

Katara stood up. The cool ocean breeze lifted her hair off her neck, and she watched the grasses ripple around her. Tomorrow she would take Zuko to meet the elder’s council, and while he asked his questions, she would ask hers. The future of waterbending rested with her.

 

She looked back at Zuko, ready to make plans. But he was looking at her, his mouth pressed in a thin line.

 

Her throat constricted and time seemed to stand still. She hoped she was wrong, but—he _recognized_ her.

 

“Are you okay?” she asked. If he recognized her—this whole thing was about to go to swamp. No way would these interviews continue, and she’d have a rough time getting the elders to talk about the past without a weird firebender tag-along.

 

But he didn’t say anything. “Yeah,” was all he said. He stood up, recognition still written across his face. “See you tomorrow.”

 

Katara watched him walk back to the road and climb onto Bo’s bike, then drive away.

 

Somehow, she didn’t think she would see him tomorrow.

  


 

 

Back at home, Katara avoided her father and Gran-Gran sitting on the back porch and darted to her room in the back of the house, where she pulled out her Fire Nation-made computer. It took her only a matter of minutes to pull up the video clips of herself on the Fire Nation news.

 

WORLD WIDE BENDING TEAM DISQUALIFIED FROM UPCOMING TOURNAMENT

 

WORLD WIDE BENDING TEAM MEMBER BLOCKED DUE TO UNDETERMINED NATIONALITY

 

NCU STUDENT DISQUALIFIED FROM

WWB FOR MISREPRESENTING NATIONALITY

 

TERRITORIES: FIRE NATION OR NOT?

 

Katara scrolled past the links, knowing what each one contained. If she was going to wallow in the past, she preferred to look at the news outlets that had actually bothered to interview her.

 

She found the link at the bottom of the list: NCU STUDENT PROTESTS WWB DISQUALIFICATION. She clicked the link and opened up the video, which she could quote from memory. But it always jarred her when she saw herself and her teammates frozen in ice in front of the statue of Avatar Roku in the Capital square.

 

_Ha Katara, a waterbender from the territory of Whale Tail Island, was disqualified from joining her WWB team for a competition in Pohuai last Thursday due to what WWB officials called her undetermined nationality. Her disqualification has launched a series of debates across the National Caldera University campus about the position of the territories within the Fire Nation._

 

 **_A-zo Fazhao, WWB Team Member:_ ** _She’s our teammate! This is an outrage and a disgrace. She never should have been disqualified in the first place._

 

 **_Ko Yusen, NCU Professor of Foreign Policy:_ ** _Traditionally, peoples of the territories have not been granted full citizenship due to political unrest. Those territories that have reformed their citizenry, such as Lotus Island, have naturally been afforded the full rights of citizenship within the Fire Nation. Whale Tail Island has not made the same type of progress._

 

 **_Chang Ten, WWB Official, Nation of Makapu:_ ** _Our job is to provide an assessment of all players within the WWB and to prevent wide-spread cheating and exploitation. We based our assessment of Ha based on our policy that WWB players must be registered citizens of a participating nation in order to play._

 

 **_Ha Katara, Disqualified WWB Player:_ ** _I will be out here protesting until the people of the Fire Nation notice this injustice! I have been unfairly disqualified and I will not be quiet! I am an NCU student, determined to play for a Fire Nation team. Will the people of the Fire Nation not defend me?_

 

_Ha Katara and her teammates have been protesting the WWB decision by sitting frozen in the Capital Square for the past three days, causing significant traffic disturbance. Allegations have also been made against Ha which call her a “political radical” and claim that she has routinely accused the Fire Nation of war crimes, many of which historical records show to be false. City Magistrate Zhan issued a statement that reads: “all allegations of radical plots against the throne are taken seriously and will be investigated.”_

 

_We will report more as the story unfolds._

 

Of course, little had unfolded. Katara was arrested by the National Investigation Agency the next day, and within the week she had agreed to leave the country. Some radical she was.

 

She did have friends, though. Someone at NCU had seen to it that she was awarded her degree, mailed to the Northern Nations where she was staying with Sokka. Her teammates insisted on marching forward with the protest, and one even went into politics, lobbying parliament to reform policies on their territories and displaced peoples.

 

Not that it mattered. Katara could never again re-enter the Fire Nation without being flagged as an “enemy of the peace.” She’d seen the label, printed in red, at the top of her file.

 

Eventually, Prince Zuko would discover the same.

  
  


 

The next day Katara went to work. She went through the motions of her day, but really she was thinking about how to get the elders to talk without Prince Zuko to help her. If they weren’t so terribly _stubborn,_ she wouldn’t be in this predicament at all. What was it that made them reluctant to talk to her, their own flesh and blood, but perfectly happy to talk to the Fire Nation prince? Her home telephone was ringing every night, with elders on the other end who wanted to know why she hadn’t asked to interview _them._

 

The terrible thought occurred to her that their reluctance was entirely personal. Would they have talked to Sokka, if he had interest in interviewing them? She hated to admit it, but more than likely, they would. Most people liked Sokka better than her. Sokka, sending money home from the Northern Nations. Sokka, almost married and funny to boot. Of course they’d talk to him. Not that he’d ever been interested in waterbending, the stupid flutter-squirrel.

 

“Teacher?” called a small voice. Katara realized suddenly that she’d been writing with passion on the chalkboard, which was now covered in large and mostly illegible characters. Fifteen scared faces looked back at her.

 

Katara sighed. “Take out your books,” she said.

  


 

 

The rest of the day passed in the same way. At the end of the day, she took the waterbending kids out to the field and set them to conditioning drills—run the length of the field, bend water out of a bucket, run it back to the other end, and bend it into another bucket—when she spotted Zuko out of the corner of her eye. He was alone. Part of her felt sad, seeing that he’d come to cancel their project alone. She wished she could have said goodbye to Bo.

 

“Hey,” Zuko said when he got close. He didn’t _sound_ angry, but who knew how princes sounded? “I thought we had an appointment today.”

 

Katara blinked up at him. “Oh—oh, yeah.” She gestured to the kids. “I need to run their drills first.”

 

Had he _not_ figured it out? And if he hadn’t, could she keep it from him indefinitely? Katara wasn’t sure what would be the worse outcome.

 

“Okay.” Zuko nodded and stood next to her, his arms behind his back. She changed a glance at him and found him pensive, uncomfortable—in other words, unchanged.

 

Katara blew her whistle, and the kids cheered, then flopped down onto the field almost in unison, except for the kids who rushed together to look at her and Zuko and giggle with their heads together. Brats.

 

Zuko cleared his throat. She looked up and found him rubbing at the back of his neck, distinctly uncomfortable.

 

“I, um,” he said. “Realized why you looked familiar.”

 

Katara chewed at her cheek and tried not to let herself feel anything. So he _had_ figured it out.

 

“You saw the videos?”

 

He nodded. “Can we talk?”

 

Katara sighed and led the way to the large stone staircase at the edge of the field that doubled as bleachers. They sat down, and Zuko opened his mouth to speak, but Katara held up a hand.

 

“It’s okay,” she said. “I understand you can’t be associated with me.”

 

Zuko’s brow furrowed. “What?”

 

“You saw the news clips, didn’t you? Aren’t you coming to cancel our deal?”

 

Zuko shook his head. “No. I made an oath to you.” He stared at her like she was the crazy one in the situation, when it was clearly him. “But I do want to ask you about it.”

 

Katara let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. So it wasn’t the end of their odd deal. Suddenly hope bloomed in her chest again—she still had the chance to get the elders to talk. But she had to contend with the prince beside her, first.

 

“I wasn’t hiding this from you.” Katara looked up at him and chanced a smile, hoping he’d recognize her sincerity. “It’s not something I think about that often. It’s been a long time.”

 

Zuko folded his hands over his knees and nodded. “I didn’t think you were hiding it. And I understand wanting to leave the past in the past.” He looked back at her again, his long hair falling into his eyes. “The articles said you were deported, but it seemed like you left of your own will.”

 

Katara thought about the hours she’d spent waiting in the investigator’s office, feeling like a criminal. “I did,” she said. “I thought the investigation was insulting. I always spoke my mind, when I was a university student, but I never made any ‘plots against the throne.’ They told me they’d drop the investigation if I left the country. So I did.”

 

How strange it was, to have the prince of the Fire Nation asking her these questions, with concern written across his face. If the investigators could have seen this, they would have flickered in their boots.

 

Zuko kept watching her. Then his eyes drifted, momentarily, across the field and the laughing children, before coming back to rest on her again. She felt so strange under his gaze, like she wanted to look away, but she wouldn’t.

 

“Do you hate the Fire Nation?” he asked.

 

Katara pulled at a strand of hair. “It’s not that _simple._ Maybe if I’d lived a hundred years ago—but it’s just not that simple now.”

 

Zuko nodded, still watching her. “I’m listening, if you want to share with me.”

 

Such an odd prince. She never could have predicted that she’d have the opportunity to try to explain the nature of her divided heart to a ruler of the nation who made it so.

 

“I don’t—hate the Fire Nation.” Katara spread her hands out in front of her and looked at them instead of Zuko. “There are parts of me that are so Fire Nation, it actually hurts. I think in your language. I waterbend in your style. I grew up watching Ember Island Comedy Hour and reading your uncle’s Dragon Stories books.”

 

Zuko smiled, the first warm and unguarded smile she’d seen him wear. She found herself smiling, too.

 

“I still remember your Comedy Hour episode, by the way,” Katara said.

 

Zuko gripped the bridge of his nose and groaned. “You know why I did that? I was just so _mad_. They always wrote me so badly!” He threw his arms up in a gesture of defeat. “My sister still makes fun of me to this day for going on that show.”

 

Katara laughed. “Don’t worry. You were cute. No one will ever forget your angelic face.”

 

Zuko snorted and pinched the bridge of his nose again.

 

Katara sighed. “See—this is the problem. I have fond memories of all these things. I have dear friends in the Fire Nation, who I still keep in touch with. But things happen, like I get banned from a WWB tournament, and it reminds me that I don’t have a place in this world. Or I come home, and I see all the ways my tribe is kept buried in ash. I hate the way the winds of fate have blown. I hate what happened.” She shook her head, looking over at Zuko. “But it's not really that I hate the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation hates _me_.”

 

Zuko looked as if she had struck him across his face. But he didn’t contradict her, just nodded. They sat in silence for a few moments, watching the clouds float across the sky. In the far distance, she could see the blue line of the ocean. Katara remembered the first time she had crossed it, all those years ago, to go to the Fire Nation. She’d been hopeful then, and later come to despise the Fire Nation. Now she lived in this in-between state, angry but stagnant, trying to make something beautiful of the shards the world had given her.

 

Zuko turned to her again. “I still don’t understand why the whole thing blew up,” he said. “You were hardly the first.”

 

Katara snorted. “That’s the terrible part. It was the Northern Nations team we were supposed to be playing who appealed to the WWB committee about my nationality. I guess they saw what a team with firebenders _and_ waterbenders looked like, and they didn’t want to lose.” She laughed in disbelief. “They’re supposed to be our sister tribe and they threw me to the octo-sharks.”

 

“I saw you battle,” Zuko said. “You were impressive.”

 

Katara bit at her lip. Zuko had looked up videos of her team, as well? That was embarrassing. But he wasn’t wrong.

 

“Fire and water play well together, your highness.” She shrugged. “It was a terrible time in my life. I had to reexamine everything I knew about the world. I got really involved with the Path of the Avatar, bought all that stuff about the four nations together in harmony.”

 

She turned to him, willing him to understand. For some reason, she needed him to understand, if they were going to go forward in their project. Yesterday she was yelling at him about the historic crimes his nation—his  _family—_ committed against her people. Today she was sharing her heart with him, as though they were friends. The shift didn't seem nearly as strange as she would have imagined, perhaps because Zuko gave the appearance of someone who actually listened. 

 

She'd agreed to help him talk to the elders, but as it turned out, she needed to know if he was someone she could trust herself. Sometimes, Katara didn't understand the course of her own life at all.

 

“I want it to be true,” Katara continued. “But my tribe doesn’t have a nation. And there were never just four, anyway, and there was never any era without war. So what do we have left? We’ve lost the soul of our nation, and on top of that, I discover that all my ideals are bullshit.” She dropped her head to her hands, feeling lost under the weight of the world’s injustices. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

 

Silence again. Katara listened to Zuko’s steady breathing beside her, finding herself waiting for what he would say next. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all.

 

But he inhaled, exhaled heavily, and began to speak. “No. But it’s what we inherited.”

 

Now he turned to her, glancing her way with a wry smile, before turning his gaze to the distant ocean.

 

“I spent five years in the navy, from when I was fifteen to twenty. Then I spent three years traveling with my uncle on his diplomacy trips. When I left, I thought the Fire Nation was the greatest nation in the world. In my travels I saw horrific battles, old battlegrounds, the ashes of what we’d left behind—my mind changed over those years, and eventually, I thought we must be rotten to our core.”

 

He stopped speaking. This Zuko wasn’t the one Katara had ever seen on the news or on tabloid covers. Reflective, unhappy, his words suggested a level of moral inquiry no one expected from the prince. She certainly hadn't, until now. The bitter vindication she might have felt at hearing the prince recognize his nation's evil faded into a soft ache. It was too soon to tell who he was at his core, but she felt the slightest rippling of trust, listening to him speak.

 

He gave her a small smile. “My uncle was the one who asked me, what does it mean to have fire in your heart? I’ve been asking that question ever since. I don’t have any answers yet, but I want to believe that we can change what our ancestors left us with. But that starts,” his eyebrows lifted,  “with preventing an unnecessary war.”

 

Always back to the mission. Katara had never met anyone quite as single-minded as this—except, perhaps, herself. She still wanted to talk about what her tribe had suffered, wanted to make him understand. But she could let the subject rest for the time being. Apparently, they had time yet.

 

“I thought you wouldn’t work with me anymore,” Katara said.

 

“Like I said, I made you an oath. I don’t go back on my word.” Zuko looked at her. “And besides, watching those video clips, I thought, this is a woman who gets things done.”

 

Katara laughed. “You’re not wrong, your highness.”

 

“Call me Zuko.”

 

She looked at him, and found herself wanting to laugh again. She hoped that Bato was nowhere nearby, because he would get way too much joy out of this.

 

“Okay,” she said, in spite of herself. “Zuko.”


End file.
